Honestly those two reviews are pretty positive. Hopefully lenstip or photozone will get hold of a copy soon.

I too am considering either the Zeiss 21 conversion or this new samyang. I don't think the Zeiss is the holy grail people sometimes claim it to be, but it is one of the best options for our system. I wouldn't be surprised if at f/2.8, this samyang showed similar enough performance to make it worthwhile.

Lovely photos bootlec, I especially like the one of the grass roofed houses.

You mention May-September as the best time to go. I was in Alaska this June for the long sun, and while it was wonderful, I did miss out on the auroras. Sounds like early September would be a good fit for both auroras and good travel conditions.

Yeah, that's clearly what they want us to buy, it's just odd that they didn't pull/re-describe the old warranties when they released the new ones.

I talked to a Ricoh rep about it yesterday, this was the conversation:
Me: "I noticed that the authorized dealers are still selling the old warranty which by description covers the K-1. Will Ricoh still honor these while they're still in stock?"
Rep: "How much is it?"
Me: "About $20"
Rep: "Nope, that's the wrong product"
Me: "Well I've seen the new one being sold as well, but it wasn't immediately obvious when I just searched for Pentax extended warranty. By all accounts, the wording on the old warranty looks valid for the K-1."
Rep: "but it doesn't cost enough, it should be at least $100"
Me: "Cost aside, if you had a customer purchase this thinking it covered the K-1, which by its verbiage should, are you saying you wouldn't honor it?"
Rep: "no it was the wrong product"
Me: "and when the customer points out that it says it should cover the K-1?"
Rep: "maybe they can get a refund from the store they bought the warranty"

I'm not going to buy either warranty for sure, but Ricoh sure needs to work on that customer service department... Sheesh!

You can purchase the warranty from another dealer as long as it's within 30 days. The $110 B&H warranty isn't worth it anymore in my opinion. After all, I just paid $1300 for a factory bumper to bumper warranty for 8 full years and 120,000 miles on my $33k van. That's 0.8% per year warranty after standard warranty. For the camera it's 3.25% per year after standard warranty, and I have a really good feeling chances are better for my van to fail 7 years from now than my camera in 2 years.

I'm trying to get Pentax to verify acceptance that the old $17.95 warranty will be grandfathered in, it doesn't make sense for it to be sold and not work for the K-1.

The problem I expect is ambiguity on the cutoff for underexposure. Overexposure is simple, the well of the photosite saturates, so you get a count value of about 2^14-1. For underexposure, where should the cutoff be set? It can't be 0, as read and shot noise will bump it up above that, and really you aren't seeing 14 bits of image in the preview, hence why we can push the shadows so much in the raw file.

I get what you're saying, but I don't think it was helping as much as you might think, at least if you shot raw.

@Adam is the old $15-$20 policy still valid for the K-1? They are still available for purchase at many authorized dealers. If it's not valid, then they are all providing false advertising, class action lawsuit city!

I'm getting a K-1 next week, and I already have the K-5iis, so I'll do a test for you and post the results. Anything in particular you want to see?

---------- Post added 07-31-16 at 07:40 PM ----------

Yeah I think this is a big miscommunication. My expectation is per-pixel noise is not much improved, but with the larger MP sensor, the same scene has more pixels for the processing software to filter against. I'll test this too.

The popflash photo eBay store is selling the K-1 new at $1688 on their eBay store. Popflash is an authorized dealer and I've had good transactions with them in the past. I just purchased one. 7 sold today, 2 remaining.

Thanks for the write up Les, good to hear it's working out better this go 'round. On my K-5 I'd usually like shooting it at f/2.2 or higher, but occasionally the wide open shots would pan out. Are you finding that the lens is more useful wide open, or is it just much more useful stopped down now that the DOF is narrower for similar compositions?

When I had to replace my Nokton, I went with an A50/1.2. It gives me a similar style (as expected), and I'm looking forward to trying it on a K-1 later this year.

Nice find Class A, that's exciting indeed. Now I have to answer the question of whether this lens would provide enough utility when I already own the excellent DFA100/2.8. Of course it's a lens suited for an entirely different purpose... tempting! ;)

Thanks for the report! I'm also looking into trying this with the 21/2.8. Just to be sure, when you mention sanding the mount, you are referring to the mount ring supplied by Leitax correct? Do you agree with their statement that the operation is fully reversible?